Department Expands Its Conferences To Promote Choice

Washington--The Education Department has expanded both the length
and number of regional conferences it is hosting this fall to promote
choice as a school-reform strategy.

Each of the five meetings--one more than originally scheduled--will
be presided over by Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos, and will
include presentations by other national and local leaders.

The meetings form the centerpiece of the department's initiative on
parental choice, which was unveiled by Mr. Cavazos in a May 19
speech.

Department officials also have added an evening session to encourage
parents to attend the meetings.

Parents will be asked to relate their experiences with existing
choice programs or to describe the types of programs they would like to
see established, said John D. Klenk, director of the choice
initiative.

"Parental choice is the cornerstone to restructuring elementary and
secondary education," Secretary Cavazos said in a statement. "These
regional strategy meetings will bring this valuable reform to the
attention of families in every part of the nation."

The first meeting is scheduled to be held Oct. 16 and 17 in East
Harlem in New York City, site of one of the most long-running and
celebrated parental-choice programs.

The others will be held Oct. 23 and 24 in Minneapolis; Nov. 13 and
14 in Charlotte, N.C.; Nov. 16 and 17 in Denver; and Nov. 28 and 29 in
Richmond, Calif.

"The local school authorities in several cases are making available
the opportunity to visit some schools of choice, either the day after
the meeting or during the day preceding the parents evening," Mr. Klenk
said.

School officials in Richmond, Calif., are going a step further by
arranging for some participants to stay with families whose children
are attending a school of choice, he added.

In a related development, the department has released a new report
in which a researcher cautions that successful choice plans require
careful planning as well as safeguards to ensure students are treated
equitably.

The 30-page report, "Progress, Problems, and Prospects of State
Choice Plans," describes the types of choices parents can make under
existing law in each of the 50 states.

It also summarizes the growing body of research on choice plans
within public-school systems, offering a list of characteristics common
to successful plans. These plans tend to include such elements as
extensive parental outreach and counseling, admission procedures that
encourage a broad mixture of student backgrounds and abilities, and
opportunities for teachers to participate in designing programs, the
report says.

"Failure to include these elements can increase rather than decrease
the gaps in achievement and opportunity between affluent and low-income
young people," says the report, written by Joe Nathan, senior fellow at
the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Mr.
Nathan has worked as a consultant for several states that have adopted
or are consideringchoice legislation.

The report also recommends that the Education Department be more
discriminating in the types of choice plans it supports through the
magnet-school assistance program, saying that some of the plans funded
previously have been "frequently criticized."

Copies of the report are available free of charge from the Planning
and Evaluation Service, Office of Planning, Budget, and Evaluation,
Education Department, 400 Maryland Ave., S.W., Room 3127, Washington,
D.C. 20202-4244.

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